The SWAT commander broke in through the secure channel, where Bobby wouldn’t be able to hear. “Another car, a van, has come within the half-mile radius. Lone male driver.”
“I’m coming to get my sister,” Bobby said. “And if you try to pull a fast one on me, know that there’s enough explosive on cute little Ms. Flynn to take out her and everyone else you have hiding within a quarter-mile radius. Of course, that might have something to do with the explosives I packed into the SUV.”
“You changed the rules,” Roger said, voice low. “This wasn’t what we agreed to.”
“You’re hardly in the position to complain, Roger. Give my sister the keys to your car. Little Tess has the instructions, though I’m sure your wonderfully trained FBI agents have already figured out where I am. Tell them to hold off, or I detonate Ms. Flynn right now.”
“Bastard.”
“Tsk, tsk. You’re not in a good mood, are you, Roger? As soon as I have my sister, I’ll set the bomb. You’ll have ten minutes to disarm it. I’m sure that’ll be enough time for a brilliant FBI agent such as yourself.
“But,” Bobby continued, his voice low, “if you try to screw me, I’ll detonate it immediately. Understand?”
“Yes.” Roger’s voice was strained.
“Send Lily to me now. If I don’t see her in three minutes KA-BOOM.”
John realized that Bobby was too far away to see what was going on at the exchange site. He had a chance to get to Tess and start dismantling the bomb. Three minutes? Next to impossible. But he had to try. He didn’t believe for a moment that MacIntosh would give them the full ten minutes. He listened as Roger told the commander to clear the area of all personnel, back at least two hundred yards.
Rowan watched John sprint toward Tess, who looked like she wore several pounds of plastic explosive wired into a vest. At the same time, the decoy emerged from the rear passenger door. From a hundred feet away, she could pass for Rowan.
Bobby wouldn’t buy it when they were up close and personal. He’d blow up everyone here.
Quinn got out of the driver’s side of Roger’s car and the decoy started walking toward John and Tess.
Rowan would give anything to know what was going on.
Tess was sobbing silently when John rushed to her side.
“Go away! Go away!” she cried, her face a mask of terror. “He’s going to kill us all.”
“Shh, Tess, I know what I’m doing.” John had dismantled more complicated bombs, but this one could be detonated by remote or misstep. He had to proceed with caution.
“No, no, you can’t. Please, go away. Save yourself and everyone else. It’s my fault.” She was shaking and tears streamed down her face.
“Tess!” He didn’t want to yell at her, but if she panicked they would all end up dead. “Look at me.” He held her face in his hands.
She did, her green eyes wide with shock and fear.
“I can fix this. But you can’t move. You have to remain as still as possible, understand?”
She nodded, almost imperceptibly, but still shook in his hands.
“Th-there’s more in the truck,” she said, her teeth chattering.
“I know. One thing at a time.” He let go of her and pulled his fully loaded Swiss army knife out of his pocket. Not ideal, but it would do. It had to.
“Ms. Flynn?”
John glanced over his shoulder and did a double take. For a brief moment he thought she was Rowan. She wasn’t.
“Tess, where does Bobby want her to go?” John asked.
“It won’t work. He’ll know she’s not Rowan and you’ll die, John. We’ll all die. He’ll kill us!” Tess was shouting hysterically.
John slapped her, wincing at the sound his hand made against Tess’s cheek. Her head jerked back and her hand came up to her face. “Hey!” she said, frowning.
“Tess, I’m sorry. You have to stay with me here.” He started separating the wires so he could see how the bomb was put together.
“I’m Special Agent Francie Blake, Ms. Flynn. I need to know where to go. Now.”
Tess pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to her. “Be careful. When he realizes you’re not Rowan, I don’t know what he’ll do, but he won’t be happy. He knew there was a decoy at her house.”
“What?” John asked, pausing briefly in his assessment of the bomb. He resumed.
“He watched the house somehow. Saw her running and he told me he knew she wasn’t Rowan. That Rowan had run away. Francie, you can’t go. He’ll kill you.”
“I’m trained, Ms. Flynn.” She was reading the note.
John had a bad feeling. He turned on the mike so he could speak to Collins and the rest of the team. “Collins? Tess said MacIntosh knows about the decoy in Malibu. Saw her running.”
“That can’t be. We had three teams covering the outside of the house, one inside.”
“Boat? The cliffs? I don’t know.” He clipped one wire, bracing himself. Good. The right one.
“How fast can you diffuse the bomb?”
“I think I can get Tess done, but not in three minutes. Correction, ninety seconds. We need that extra ten minutes.”
He snipped another wire and swore. There was a failsafe. He had to start from square one.
“He’s not going to give you ten minutes, John. He’s not,” Tess said. “Go. Please. I-I’ll be okay.”
John ignored his sister’s pleas. “Get out of here, Blake. Stall as best you can. I need at least five minutes for Tess’s vest, then we’ll run like hell.”
“I’m outta here. I’ll give you as much time as I can.” She sprinted back to Roger’s car.
John moved Tess fifty feet from the SUV, but he couldn’t work and talk at the same time, so he focused on the bomb. But a familiar voice came through on his mike.
“Roger, I have to go,” said Rowan.
“No,” Collins said.
John glanced over his shoulder. There she was.
“Dammit, Roger!” Rowan snapped. “When he sees it’s not me, he’s going to detonate the bomb.”
“Blake, go.”
A moment later, Roger’s SUV passed John, heading southwest across the dry field.
“Roger, he’s going to kill her! Call her back.”
“Francie Blake is suited up. She’s going to buy us time to dismantle the bomb, and then-”
“Get out of here, Rowan,” said Roger. “Peterson, get her out of here.”
“Let me go, Quinn!”
“Rowan,” Collins said, “there’s a bomb in that SUV over there. As soon as Ms. Flynn is in the clear, we’re all running.”
John wanted to wring Rowan’s neck for leaving the safe house, but right now he had too much to worry about. Sweat poured off his face as he unscrewed the faceplate of the timer with the tiny screwdriver in his knife. He dropped it to the ground and concentrated on the remote timer.
“John?” Tess asked, her voice high-pitched and soft.
“Two more minutes.” He hoped.
“Two minutes?” Collins repeated over the mike.
“I think so. Maybe three.”
The next minute passed too quickly, but he made some progress. Collins, Peterson, and Rowan approached and stood a few feet away. He spared a glance at Rowan. She was covered in dust, her face cold and unreadable. Except her eyes.
She was frantic.
“You should have stayed at the safe house,” John told her, his voice low and angry. He turned his attention back to the bomb.
“You shouldn’t have left me there.”
He couldn’t rush the procedure, but he worked as fast as possible. Faster than he would have liked.
A shotgun blast resonated through the still air and Tess screamed. It took John a second to realize she hadn’t been hit. The blast was too far away.
Agent Blake.
He heard the chirp of a cell phone. It wasn’t his.
Roger answered. “MacIntosh?”
“She wasn’t Lily. I want to talk to my sister. Now. Ten seconds or I blow the SUV. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.”
Rowan wrestled the phone from Roger’s hand.